


Festive Lessons

by skysedge



Category: Uta no Prince-sama
Genre: Christmas, Fluff, Gen, Humour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:55:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21919450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skysedge/pseuds/skysedge
Summary: After the group's party plans fall through, Cecil is left to try and get into the Christmas spirit on his own. How hard can making a hot chocolate be, anyway?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	Festive Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> Written for @manami_hanatsuk for the UtaPri Secret Santa 2019! You said you like Cecil a whole lot so I hope this little fic about him trying to understand how to be Christmassy makes you smile! Happy Holidays!

It’s mid-December and the temperature outside has dropped  to . The temperature inside isn’t much better. Cecil is struggling to wrap himself in a fifth blanket on the couch of the room he’s forced to share with Camus when he gets the bad news.

“I’m sorry,”  Haruka says, bowing so low that her hair falls to cover her face completely. “I know we had all agreed to spend time together today but this just came up and...”

And it’s not  _ her  _ fault that some television show had rescheduled their segment on Camus to today last minute, or that Shining had insisted she go with him for reasons he refused to explain. It’s not  _ her  _ fault that Cecil had been looking forward to the  nabemono party with her and the rest of  Starish . It’s not  _ her  _ fault that he had been planning on sitting next to her and gifting her a scarf he had bought because the colour reminded him of her eyes, intending to put it on for her and have a perfectly wonderful wintery time like he had seen about on television. 

“I’m really, truly sorry!” she says again.

It’s not  _ her  _ fault. It’s Camus’s. Most things are. Cecil wraps his blankets more tightly around him, lips set in a pouty sulk, and shakes his head.

“It’s okay, Haruka,” he says and she brightens up for all of a moment. “Just cancel the interview and send Camus away and we can have fun!”

Cecil doesn’t understand the way her face falls at this. It’s a totally reasonable suggestion, isn’t it? It’s not like Quartet Night  _ need  _ the extra press right now. Camus is supposed to be his senpai, his mentor, and if anyone should be making sacrifices it should be him. Cecil has been  _ trying  _ to work hard at the Master Course all month, he deserves an afternoon off, an afternoon of laughter and food and  Haruka’s sweet smile, an afternoon of no Camus whatsoever.

Right now,  Haruka looks as if she’s about to cry and Camus is glaring daggers at him.

“I don’t think we can do that, Cecil-san...”

“Why not?” he insists. “Your happiness is more important than Camus anyway and-”

“Enough of this, ingrate,” Camus interrupts, swinging out an arm to hold in front of  Haruka like a barrier. “We’re going. That’s final. This is what being an idol is all about. Stay here and think about your priorities until I return.”

With that, Camus sweeps his way out of the room and away down the corridor.  Haruka hesitates in the doorway, eyes wide and expression torn. 

“Maybe we can go another day?” she suggests. “I really am sorry...”

Cecil lets out a deep sigh and slumps sideways onto the couch, defeated. 

“It’s okay,” he tells her although his voice isn’t as upbeat as usual. “Make sure you keep warm, my princess.”

She blushes as she always does and gives him a sunny smile and a nod before turning and chasing after Camus who has probably left without her. This leaves Cecil alone in the room, alone and freezing, alone and freezing and  _ cranky.  _ He’s so tangled in the blankets and so low on motivation that for a while he just lays there, wondering if he can sleep through the rest of the day and dream of more festive things.  Unfortunately his phone starts buzzing less than ten minutes later. There’s a message in the group chat.

_ Let’s reschedule in the new year. _

It looks like the others have found out about the change in plans and while he also wants to reschedule so that  Haruka can be there, he also wants to do it today. It’s his first real Christmas here and so  far it’s been nothing but a disappointment. 

Japan is  _ cold.  _ The snow is pretty but the icy air makes his nose hurt and the snow melts and leaks through his shoes. Wet socks are a particular horror he had never experienced until this year. Frost looks nice until he has to hold onto a handrail leading to the subway and the cold bites through his gloves. The streets are all lit up and look beautiful but it’s so busy with everyone Christmas shopping that going out in public to have a look around is more dangerous than it’s worth – wearing sunglasses isn’t a good disguise in winter, apparently. And if he can’t go out the only alternative is to lay here until winter is over.

The others have painted a different picture. They’ve told him about presents and Christmas trees, about hand-knitted scarves and mittens, about Santa and snowflakes and delicious hot pots you can cook with the people you care about. He had been hoping that today he’d finally get to feel a bit of that winter magic but Camus has ruined everything.

Camus  _ loves  _ the winter. He’s been walking around in shirt sleeves and thin slacks, eating ice-cream, calling Cecil weak and foolish and claiming over and over that in Silk Palace, this is  _ mild  _ weather. Ugh. Cecil hates him. He couldn’t have been paired with anyone worse. And now here he is, alone in the room he’s forced to share while the ice king himself steals the princess away.

In short, Cecil is miserable. He wriggles around in the blankets until just his eyes and hands are outside and texts the others back, complaining about his situation. Immediately his phone blows up with kind suggestions.

_ Make a hot chocolate!  _

_ I bet Camus-senpai has marshmallows! _

_ Eat some gingerbread! _

_ Put carols on the television! _

So much warmth. So many good ideas. Cecil feels a little overwhelmed and incredibly grateful. He emerges a little more from his blanket fort and replies.

_ I’ll try all of those things! Thank you everyone! _

Christmas isn’t completely ruined. Not yet. He’s going to do one thing at a time and by the time he’s finished,  Haruka will be back and he can make her proud for having been so festive. It’s a perfect plan. Actually, he’s  _ glad  _ he has this chance to prove he really belongs here. Right. First things first, he needs to leave the blanket nest.

“Ack!”

It’s  _ freezing.  _ He drops the blankets onto the floor and all but sprints for his closet, pulling out every jumper he owns and pulling them over his head in a frenzy. Next come three pairs of socks, a bright green bobble hat, and a scarf decorated with reindeer. The many layers make it a little hard to move but at least he’s not shivering anymore. Stage one is complete.

Next comes hot chocolate. He’s not entirely sure what that is but it can’t be too hard if Camus can manage it. Hot chocolate and marshmallows. He makes sure the door is locked before heading to Camus’s cupboards. The older idol insists on having a mini-kitchen in their room and seems to be eating sweets  _ all the time.  _ Cecil had tried to go through the cupboards in their first week together and had received such a long and boring scolding that he hasn’t bothered since. Today is going to be different. He pulls open the cupboard he knows the food is stored in and scrutinised the contents.

“Hot chocolate...hot chocolate...”

There’s nothing hot in the cupboard at all. He touches it all to check. But he finds the marshmallows quickly enough and pulls out the bag to set it on the counter. One thing down. Looking back at the cupboard he reads each handwritten label in order.  _ BLAH, BLAH, BLAH... _ drinking chocolate? It’s a drink? Then why isn’t it in a bottle? He brings down the canister and pops open the lid, sending a cloud of chocolate dust into the air. The container is full of powder. He pokes it with a finger, moves it around, and finds it to be both not hot and not liquid. He’s sure he’s missing something here. It can’t be very complicated.

The others told him to have it with marshmallows. He looks at them for a moment and then applies marshmallows to the chocolate dust, shaking the container until they’ve rolled around a bit. It’s still not hot. It looks...bad. But he’s heard  Haruka say she likes it and she has the best taste of everyone so it  _ has  _ to be good.

He raises the container to his lips and tips his head backwards.

A few minutes later, once he’s coughed and sneezed so  hard he’s sure chocolate powder has come out of his nose, he reaches for a marshmallow. That has to make it better, right?

Wrong. The marshmallow is even  _ drier.  _ When he bites into it the inside is gooey and sticks to the back of his teeth. He splutters and chokes his way through it and by the time he’s finished, he’s breathing heavily and leaning on the counter.

“This is.... hot chocolate?”

There’s dust all over the side. His tongue and throat hurts. But all the coughing  _ has  _ made him a little warmer. What a strange custom. Drinking powder. What would they think of next?

Counting the whole experience down to a success, he looks back at the group chat. Next up is carols and gingerbread. He reopens the cupboard and can’t see anything labelled gingerbread but there  _ is  _ ginger and there is a loaf of bread. He methodically applies one to the other and takes a bite. Until this moment, he hadn’t known that his mouth was capable of feeling four kinds of dryness at once. Maybe it’s to combat the wet of the snow outside? Is that it? 

He eats only one slice of gingery bread and then puts all the foodstuffs away, confused but proud of himself. He has no right to judge, anyway. He’s sure that if he were to feed the others some of the  dishes he was used to in  Agnapolis they would have a strange reaction to. He’ll get used to it, in time. Just like with soba noodles. Right.

Carols on television. That’s easier. He gathers the abandoned blankets up on the sofa until they make a sort of seat and then nestles in, grabbing the remote and turning the television on. The first few channels are a miss. A news report about people in foreign countries trampling each other in Christmas sales. The movie  _ Die Hard,  _ for some reason. Camus’s stupid interview.  Finally he tunes in to a group of carollers in a beautifully decorated church and his eyes grow wide in wonder.

He’s not sure what language they’re singing in. It’s not Japanese. But It's beautiful, the harmonies and the robes, the candles and the trees. He watches until his mouth has started to produce saliva again, picking up on some of the refrains and joining in with the carollers in a wordless hum. The service ends and he  flicks channels until he finds another one and this time he’s memorised enough of the tunes that he has a good go at singing along, raising his voice joyfully with the chorus.

The sun sets outside the window and soon the room is dark other than the twinkling lights from the television. He’s not cold anymore, the jumpers and the singing keeping him warm. When the door is finally unlocked from the outside and opened, Cecil had almost completely forgotten that he had been in a bad mood and is taken off guard when  Haruka rushes over to him with another apology.

“Sorry we were gone so long!” she says. “We brought you this as an apology!”

A takeaway coffee cup is pressed into his hands, the warmth seeping through the cardboard. When he breathes in, he can smell chocolate.

“This is...”

“Hot chocolate!”  Haruka tells him. “Give it a try.”

He does. It’s nothing like the one he had made earlier. It’s  _ amazing.  _ He drains the cup so quickly he burns the roof of his mouth and gives Haruka a wide smile.

“Fantastic!” he says happily. “It tastes like Christmas! It isn’t dry at all!”

Haruka blinks at him in confusion.

“Dry...?”

“Here, you oaf.”

Camus reaches over the back of the sofa and drops a small box into his lap. The label reads  _ Gingerbread.  _ Cecil eyes it with suspicion.

“Sophisticate your palate,” Camus says before turning his back on them both and heading to the kitchen. “It’s the best in the market.”

Cecil opens the box as  Haruka sits beside him on the couch, gaze fixed on the carollers on the television. He likes the way the lights sparkle in her eyes.

“My princess, you’re-”

“ _ Now,”  _ Camus interrupts. “Or I’ll take it back.”

Cecil shoots him a glare but does as he’s told, opening the box to find...

“A cookie?”

“It’s shaped like a snowflake!”  Haruka points out excitedly. “How cute!”

It  _ is  _ cute. A small snowflake shaped cookie, iced in white. He breaks off a corner and tries it, whole expression lighting up at the taste. It’s sweet, and soft, and not really very gingery or breadlike. Maybe it had to be cooked? He’s not going to ask  _ Camus  _ and so he breaks off another point and hands it out for Haruka.

“Share it with me?” he asks, smiling as she blushes.

“Thank you!”

“Aijima,” Camus says from the kitchen. “Have you been tampering with my food?”

“Ah...I...”

“Camus-senpai!”  Haruka calls, saving Cecil from certain death. “Come and share this with us!”

Camus hesitates for a moment and Cecil is ready to fight with him when the man softens and closes his cupboard with a sigh.

“Fine,” he says. “It is Christmas, after all.”

Some time later, Cecil finds himself sitting between  Haruka and Camus, all three of them bundles in the blankets. The gingerbread is long gone but the sweet taste of that and the chocolate lingers on his tongue. On the television the carollers keep singing and by now all three of them are singing along, Camus grudgingly harmonising. 

“We’ll have that  nabemono party soon, okay?”  Haruka suggests in a break between songs. 

“Oh!” Cecil’s eyes widened, having completely forgotten. “Yes! That would be wonderful!”

“Can Camus-senpai and the others come too?”

Cecil hesitates a moment and then gives a warm smile.

“Of course,” he agrees. “That’s what Christmas is all about, isn’t it?”


End file.
